Many consumers desire to accurately and continuously measure the amount of ink within an ink supply, such as an ink cartridge in a printer. By doing so, consumers can be provided with information regarding not only the amount of ink remaining in a supply, but also the amount of time remaining before the ink is to be replaced.
Existing methods for measuring the ink in an ink supply include the drop counting method, low-on-ink detection binary measurement, and the human visual evaluation method. These methods and other existing methods for measuring the ink remaining in an ink supply have several problems. One typical problem with existing methods is the measurements are often not accurate and are more accurate when the supply of ink is at or near empty. Thus, the consumer is provided with a low-on-ink notification immediately before the ink supply is empty. Therefore, the consumer runs out of ink before he is able to purchase another supply.
Another problem with existing methods for measuring the ink level in an ink supply is that printer is not timely or accurately notified of a near empty ink level. So, the printer may dry fire a pen resulting in potential damage to the printer and/or pen.
Another common problem associated with existing ink level detection methods and devices is they do not notify the consumer of counterfeit inks within an ink supply. Identifying counterfeit ink in an ink supply is desirable because the consumer can be notified of the counterfeit ink and remove it from the printer before the counterfeit ink can contaminate the remaining genuine ink within a printer.
Devices and methods are continually being sought that will accurately measure the amount of ink within an ink supply and detect whether ink within the supply is counterfeit.